Disney Marvel pampers its superheroes

After The Avengers, it’s Spider Man’s turn to light up the screen! Whether you like it or not, ol’ Spidey belongs to the superhero film genre.

At the global box office, the Spider Man franchise has raked in a mere 2.5 billion dollars since 2002! So now, the CEOs of Marvel and Sony-Columbia have decided to throw the dice once more.

The addiction is knowingly maintained by Marvel, one of the two giants of comic books, along with DC Comics, whose characters are posted in most of the superhero films that have been released recently.

At first, Marvel contented itself with selling exploitation licences to the studios that wanted to bring the great figures of American comics to the screen. But given the success of its films (even Fantastic Four, that was quite mediocre, garnered 300 million in profits), the publishing house decided to launch itself into cinematographic production. It was a good bet, as was proved by the triumph of Iron Man in 2008.

Bought by Disney in 2009, Marvel now benefits from an infrastructure capable of mounting the most ambitious projects, such as The Avengers that brings together 7 heroes in one film. The idea for Marvel is to launch a “chapter” devoted to one of its heroes every year, and one Avengers the brings them all together, once every three years. New characters must be introduced progressively and join the Avengers.

If these projects come to fruition, over the next few years audiences will be introduced to lesser-known characters such as Luke Cage, known as “the hero for hire”, a mercenary with superpowers and the first African American to have obtained his own series. Plus, many more…